The value of unpublished material

Lars Jensen lpj at forfatter.dk
Mon Nov 4 00:08:49 CET 2002


sigvald at duckburg.dk wrote:

> I just read that unpublished Disney comics material should not be
>regarded as valuable as the published material as a reference for
>facts.
>
> As an historian I disagree with that point of view. What matters is
>how a creator see something, not wether that view is published. As long
>as Barks did confirm that his unpublished tree is how he saw the
>relations between the Ducks, that are IMO facts as good as any other
>published Barksian facts.

I'm assuming this is a reference to my earlier DCML posting under the
headline "Urban myth?". Actually, I wrote: "In my opinion, [an idea is
not an official fact] until that idea has actually been bought (and
possibly published) by a Disney licensee as an in-continuity event."
Note the phrasing "In my opinion" and the word "possibly" before
"published". I'm not quite the extremist you seem to think I am.

I regard unpublished material with a certain skepticism, because I
happen to know why some of those "facts" never make it to publication.
Sometimes it's because there isn't room for them in the number of pages
allotted or because the editor removes them (which can happen for
reasons both good and bad). Or because the publisher yanks out a few
pages, often because he/she needs more space for ads.

Sometimes, though, unpublished material remains unpublished because the
writer decides against its public use, not wanting to write him/herself
into a corner by establishing *too* many facts. (If Osborne and
Taliaferro back in '37 had had HDL's mom sign that letter simply
"Della", rather than "Cousin Della", we would have been spared some
debating last week. A minimalist approach to the use of facts can be a
good thing.)

Accepting unpublished material as "factual" can also be problematic in
another way. What happens when a creator reveals unpublished "facts" to
the fan public in one form, then decides to change those "facts" before
actually using them in a story?
Let me give you a fictitious example: Let's say, for instance, that I
come up with a new adversary to Scrooge called Philbert McFink. He's a
compulsive coin collector who simply *must* have the Number One Dime,
since it's the only dime in town from that particular year. When
creating Philbert, I also decide that he is the half-brother of Magica
de Spell, but since there is no room to use that idea in my first
Philbert story, I decide to leave it out and establish it later instead.
I have, however, casually mentioned it to some fans already. So fan
websites say it's canon: He's Magica's half-brother.
Ten years later I finally get around to using Philbert with Magica, and
I decide I'd rather make him her ex-boyfriend than her half-brother. So
I do a story where he's her ex-boyfriend.
This is the first time an actual Duck story has said anything about
their relationship, but the fan sites have already been saying for years
that according to Philbert's creator, he's Magica's half-brother. So
what is he really?
Going by your view, Philbert *is* Magica's half-brother, and my new
story is by necessity out of continuity. Not because I *want* the story
to be out of continuity, or because it's a bad story - but because a
never-used "fact" from years ago gets in its way. (True, I could simply
have kept the half-brother idea to myself ten years before, rather than
telling fans. But that's beside the point.)

Treating unpublished concepts as much more than speculation can be
stifling for the creative process. That's why I'm skeptical to regarding
them as factual.

But this is all in my opinion, of course. What does everybody else
think?

Lars





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